used." In her role as head of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Leadsom stated she was "personally deeply committed to the importance of ensuring clean air". Prior to the 2017 election Leadsom advised Theresa May not to repeat her promise to allow parliamentary time to discuss repealing the hunting ban, but was overruled. European Union In April 2013 at the Hansard Society's annual parliamentary affairs lecture, Leadsom warned against the UK leaving the European Union, stating that "I think it would be a disaster for our economy and it would lead to a decade of economic and political uncertainty at a time when the tectonic plates of global success are moving." However, in 2016 Leadsom campaigned for leave in the UK referendum on European Union membership. The Mail on Sunday reproduced her earlier comments in its issue of 3 July 2016. After her comments were read out by Andrew Marr on his Sunday morning BBC programme, she explained to Marr how she reached her more recent position: "It has been a journey. When I came into Parliament, like most people in the country I'd grown up as part of the EU and it's absolutely part of our DNA and I came into Parliament, set up something called the Fresh Start Project, which took hundreds and hundreds of hours of evidence about how the EU impacts on the UK – on everything from immigration to fisheries and so on... During that process I travelled all across Europe with lots of parliamentary colleagues – up to 100 Conservative colleagues supporting this work – to try and get a really decent, fundamental reform of the EU." A spokesman for Leadsom said that the recording was "taken completely out of context" because she had opened the lecture by saying that the EU needed major reforms in order for it to be "sustainable". She added that the democratic consent for the EU in Britain was "wafer thin". Charity support Leadsom was a founder of the Northamptonshire Parent Infant Partnership, a charity providing therapeutic support to help parents bond with their babies who have insecure attachment, and also founded PIPUK, the national charity for Parent Infant Partnerships which set up branches in four further counties since its inception. NORPIP was originally set up with funding from the Ana Leaf Foundation, of which Leadsom's sister Hayley, wife of Peter de Putron, is a trustee.